Friday, September 18, 2015

One Thing Leads to Another... And Another...

I was tired of looking at the four frames to the left of the TV in the bedroom...

So I took them down this morning.

In their place, I decided to put the two wire towers up that I had there before. New things inside...

So of course I decided on my collection of carved Chinese cork. The smaller pieces nicely fit into the tower on the left.

The leftover pieces went on the drawers below the TV.

That led to moving my favorite piece of embroidery.

I think that I put this piece on the blog, soon after I found it.

April bought it for me in a thrift shop here in town. It came in it's own padded case...

It is probably the finest piece I own... It is on fine silk mesh and is done with one hair fine thread of silk at a time...

Someone told me that the Chinese used to make these with a person sitting on either side of the embroidery, passing needles back and forth. I don't know if it's true, but it would make sense...

If you spin the screen around, the cat is gray on the other side and facing the opposite direction...Chasing the same bug going in the opposite direction...

However it was done, it is amazing. I have never seen another one like it. The little red rectangle is a signature printed on the silk. I have no idea what it says. I just like the piece and wanted to put it where I could see it every day.

It was on a top shelf of the book case in the family room where I didn't look at it very often.

I doubt that you will be able to see the rest of the collection, but it looks pretty good displayed in the left tower... Lots of little trees, bridges, pagodas and cranes.

I started filling the right tower, I didn't have anymore cork carvings, but I do have a LOT of antique ivory crochet hooks... Some of which were carved in the orient around the turn of the last century.

Besides the hooks, there are awls and a few other pieces. Now I have to go hunt up my carved ivory needle case.

The implement at the front is a tool for doing tambour embroidery. There are three sizes of needles. One is the finest I have ever seen... It probably could use the hair sized silk thread from the cat screen!

The three needles fold up between the wire frame and store that way, or one can be left out and guided through the end of the tin cover for working. The case acts as a handle.

The square tool in the front is also for tambour, but for thread more like knitting worsted. I think that both were from the teens or the 20s of the last century, just from the design of the tools themselves.
I did have help with the hanging of the boxes that I moved.

Kota sat on the table and meowed. One meow for a little higher and two for a little lower. He just nodded his head to the left or the right to indicate the direction... Blame him if they aren't in the right place and correctly centered.

2 comments:

Hi Casey. Your cat embroidery is amazing. And I say that even though I cannot seeall the detail. But I saw similar work at a China Exhibit in Seattle many years ago.Incredible work! I did not purchase one of those, but I did have my name done inChinese calligraphy and it is framed over this desk.Phyllisa

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